In 2022 the follow up book What If? Here's what would happen if you nuked a hurricane. Maybe a bigger nuke could stop a hurricane? the surrounding waterthat lingers for some time. From here on standard release day was Tuesday. If you stripped away all the rules of car racing and had a contest which was simply to get a human being around a track 200 times as fast as possible, what strategy would win? Earth would be unaffected but the human race would be wiped out due to everyone trying to get home at the same time. What would happen if you tried to fly a normal Earth airplane above different Solar System bodies? How long could I stay safely at the surface? How much Force power can Yoda output?). On average, not just in spring or fall. For over 20 years, from 1962 to 1983, the fabulously named Project STORMFURY used simulations, as well as four actual hurricanes as test subjects, to see if cloud seeding with silver iodine would reduce a major storm even a little. gun at a freight train. What would it take to stop an out-of-control freight train using only b.b. What if you exploded a nuclear bomb (say, the Tsar Bomba) at the bottom of the Marianas Trench? And cut down the great tree, Weather Bureau said he could "imagine the possibility someday of exploding a nuclear bomb. The bill had no co-sponsors, never received a hearing and never became law. Coal: 24 Weather Bureau (the forerunner of the National Weather Service), Francis W. Riechelderfer (pictured), heard about this idea and did not laugh until he cried. It now has 600,000 to a million page hits daily. Far more than a book for geeks, WHAT IF: Serious Scientific Answers to Absurd Hypothetical Questions explains the laws of science in operation in a way that every intelligent reader will enjoy and feel much the smarter for having read. With today's technology, would it be possible to launch an unmanned mission to retrieve Voyager I? It would not have a big impact unless it happened during the space age. book on 12 March 2014 in the blag. What would happen if you opened a portal between Boston (sea level) and Mexico City (elev. You are in a boat directly over the Mariana Trench. But as the '50s turned to the '60s, more and more people began to realize the weapons contained inherent dangers and harms. From my seven-year-old son: How many snowflakes would it take to cover the entire world in six feet of snow? This was so far the second longest break. completely. Also, the Earth would be destroyed. What would happen if lightning struck a bullet in midair? On their website,NOAA writes, "Maybe the time will come when men and women can travel at nearly the speed of light to the stars, and we will then have enough energy for brute-force intervention in hurricane dynamics. If winds reached 500 mph, would it pick up a human? "An airburst would result in no intense fallout and the cloud would rise well above the storm to avoid rainout.". First after 25 releases was there a two week Christmas break before article 26 was released on December 31, 2012. After article 136 was released on April 12, 2015, Randal took a, At the time Randall wrote a note stating "What If updates are temporarily on hold, and will resume on July 14th, 2015 at 7:49:59 AM EDT.". Randall announced his what if? We know that there are more deadly hurricanes now than there used to be, but they don't start out that way. produces a cavity of hot gasses, which then collapses. More details.. Luckily for the coast, later research paints a less dire picture. I figured this would be long enough to warm me up but not long enough to harm me. As humans learned over the last century from a wide variety of incidents, fallout is no fun. Fast enough so you would need a speedometer in scientific notation. What would happen if everyone on earth stood as close to each other as they could and jumped, everyone landing on the ground at the same instant? Since then there was no new posts for almost four years. It should be noted that Trump denied the original report (by tweet, calling it "FAKE NEWS") and reiterated his denial when Biden mentioned it. firestorms. You can almost visualize his wide-eyed innocence, wanting to take two deadly forces and use them to destroy each other, to benefit mankind. What if you built a siphon from the oceans on Europa to Earth? How fast can you hit a speed bump while driving and live? If the bomb is being dropped over the ocean, nuclear waste will definitely affect that ecosystem first. NOAA. 30 years to walk, much longer for the sentence. What if you tried to stop rain with a laser that targeted and vaporized each incoming droplet before it could come within ten feet of the ground? Fat: 39 After that there were five more two weeks break, one three week break (before December 11, 2014) and two releases in a row (133-134 towards the end of this period of 136 articles), where the release dates where shifted so the two came out over three weeks' time with about 1.5 weeks between them. Since Death Valley is below sea level could we dig a hole to the ocean and fill it up with water? Stopping rain from falling on something with an umbrella or a tent is boring. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License. Hurricane Where-the-Hell-Is-Bermuda enters from the east side of the map, wanders around the Atlantic in a scribble, goes north for a while, and then peters out. Earlier this year, Severe Tropical Storm Sanvu passed over the Mariana Surely anything is possible if we put our minds to it, right, scientists? And also, Donald Trump allegedly threw it out there as an idea a few times while president. Then the . If you wanted to anchor an airplane into the ground so it wouldn't be able to take off, what would the rope have to be made out of? This new release is probably due to the upcoming release of the What If? Don't take any chances. What If We Nuked A Hurricane? I heard that bananas are radioactive. How strong, compared to a regular cup of tea, would the lake tea be? wiped out. What if you were flashing your BIOS during a thunderstorm and you got hit by lightning? Explanation []. How much would the sea level fall if every ship were removed all at once from the Earth's waters? [[A bar chart on a sheet of paper labeled "Fuel energy density in Megajoules Of course, at that point, it might be easier to just leave Earth behind completely. Hurricanes are some of the scariest, deadliest, most costly weather events on Earth. Even the mightiest hurricane begins life as a much smaller storm. "Needless to say, this is not a good idea.". Around the early 1990s, scientists started discovering jumbled fields of The Assuming that you have a spaceship in orbit around the Earth, could you propel your ship to speeds exceeding escape velocity by hitting golf balls in the other direction? It then seemed to stop completely after those two, and it took more than a year (62 weeks) before #157. 2 Countdown. (Assuming the average composition of rock were maintained.). 0 618: Asteroid 696: Strip Games 786: Exoplanets 809: Los Alamos petrified wood mixed with sand buried beneath the Louisiana and Texas Again. Would it do more environmental damage than it is already apparently doing? How many bananas would you need to power a house? GameStop Moderna Pfizer Johnson & Johnson AstraZeneca Walgreens Best Buy Novavax SpaceX Tesla. Probably not. Values are as follows: According to the 1993 World Almanac, the entire human race used energy at a rate of 1013 watts in 1990, a rate less than 20% of the power of a hurricane.". The hole fills in, with huge columns of steam and great improbable typhoon interaction, the overall effect of the bomb isnt expand into a bubble 70 miles across. The only three weeks break, the sixth break in total. Only to find that the chair I sat on converted the successful silence into a perfect, and loud, flute note. Or something else? The release date in the archive is the wrong month June. His responses are masterpieces of clarity and hilarity, studded with memorable cartoons and infographics. desk and steps on the 0 key, which inserts six extra zeroes: \[\text{Radius} = \left (\frac{3}{4\pi}\right) ^\frac{1}{3}\left ( \frac{40 \% \times 53000000\text{ megatons of TNT}}{\text{Mariana Trench pressure}+\text{1 ATM}} \right)^\frac{1}{3}\approx35\text{ miles}\]. Hurricanes [] Hurricane Where-The-Hell-Is-Bermuda []. This work is licensed under a Actually, it would be more clean than it is currently! I got it. Various Theoretical Models For Underwater You angle your descent and grab the pole just long enough to swing around so that when you let go you're now heading back up toward the sky. Or looking straight up at the bolt? What if I made a lava lamp out of real lava? How close could I stand to watch it? But the winds of a hurricane can destroy anything, on any level. 2 book, in. This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 2.5 License. For a more brief and arrangeable list, see. Crypto How much of the Earth's currently-existing water has ever been turned into a soft drink at some point in its history? Am I right to be afraid of pressure cookers? A bizarre 60-year-old idea to fight hurricanes using nuclear weapons resurfaced this week after Axios reported that President Trump raised the possibility with his national security advisors.. Also, it would be many times the distance the Earth is from the Moon. Usually the center but not always and usually rice, but often it will be a small section of meat. It is just like 'xkcd:volume 0' a compilation of some questions from the website, but half of them are new. My question is, what would a bowling ball look like if it were blown up to the size of the Earth? It's just a matter of time. "You could hear a gnat fart in that meeting," the source told Axios. What English word has the most consecutive letters on the same key? Can you use a magnifying glass and moonlight to light a fire? NOAA, who are so obviously at the end of their rope on this subject, explained how radioactive fallout making it to land after we nuke a hurricane is less than ideal. turbulent warm water and explosion debris. According to the report, as If everyone put little turbine generators on the downspouts of their houses and businesses, how much power would we generate? More details.. Okay, so it would be complicated, but surely if legitimate scientists have thought about nuking a hurricane, it must be worth it to at least try? That is a lot of energy. On June 1, Democratic Texas Representative Sylvia Garcia introduced the Climate Change and Hurricane Correlation and Strategy Act, which would explicitly prohibit the president or any other federal agency official from using a nuclear bomb or other "strategic weapon" to alter weather patterns or addressing climate change. From here on standard release day was again Tuesday. It turns out the ramp would need to be five miles high (8 km) to make this possible, and that would be at a speed slower than walking. {{Title text: Knuth Paper-Stack Notation: Write down the number on pages. sprawling 400-page report produced for the Department of Defense by He also says this isn't the end, that over the long term, "the risk landscape could change, and in a bad way, not in a good way. What if you somehow managed to make a stereo travel at twice the speed of sound, would it sound backwards to someone who was just casually sitting somewhere as it flies by? I've been told that if the Earth were shrunk down to the size of a bowling ball, it would be smoother than said bowling ball. And since currents move everything in the ocean around, radioactive fallout would not stay in one place and would definitely make it to land eventually. It had ended a war almost instantaneously, it was cleaner and cheaper than traditional fuels, so why couldn't it do something like fix the pesky problem of hurricanes? How many perfect scores would there be? The Great Hurricane of 1780 is estimated to have killed more than 20,000 people when it hit the Caribbean. What would the world be like if the land masses were spread out the same way as now - only rotated by an angle of 90 degrees? More details. Not in a "scatter my ashes" sense, but, like, "throw my naked corpse out the airlock" sense. With the announced release of the what if? But that doesn't mean serious scientists haven't thought about the possibility. They're so huge, they're so powerful." of 200-300 miles inland, whichever limit is reached first.. Order here! If it feels like there are more hurricanes these days than there were when you were a kid, and that they cause more damage, that's not you looking back on the past with rose-colored glasses. It answers many important questions, including whether you could jump from a plane with a helium tank and inflate balloons fast enough to slow your fall and survive (yes) and whether you could hide from a supersonic windstorm in Finland (yes, but it won't help). Hurricanes cause destruction in lots of ways, but the big one is wind. Hurricane cos(x) forms a graph of cos(x) along the bottom edge of the map.]] off the North American coast: Quantitative study of the destructive In the first Superman movie, Superman flies around Earth so fast that it begins turning in the opposite direction. The basic idea goes like this-the Pentagon should bomb the eye of a tropical storm, thereby dispersing it and saving countless lives and millions of dollars. Unlike the last article, out after almost a 15 weeks break, this one was released only a bit more than week after that. approach Iwo Jima as a radioactive whirlwind. That's scientist talk for "We are so screwed." How many flyby runs would it take to stop Jupiter completely? But this raised the question: could a bird deliver a standard 20" New York-style cheese pizza in a box? What would it be like to swim in it? Sugar: 19 What if you strapped C4 to a boomerang? What's the likelihood this could happen? It would be vapourized before it got close to the Sun. The second of two longer shifts in release day two weeks in a row which resulted in only two releases over three weeks, resulting in the eight break in total. If you carry a penny in your coin tray, how long would it take for that penny to cost you more than a cent in extra gas? The larger fish tended to be stunned for slightly longer because of their larger surface area but I don't imagine this relationship would be maintained for very large animals. dinosaurs. Hey! Though he reportedly . "People were astonished. How big would the teams have to be? After this less orderly period there came a period of 10 weeks in a row with 10 releases starting on January 1, 2015. What place on Earth would allow you to freefall the longest by jumping off it? Dotted lines indicating hurricane paths cover the map, all red except where noted. After acknowledging that the question has been answered elsewhere, he recaps the result, but then focuses more intently on the unasked resulting issue of the aftermath of everyone on Earth being magically transported to one location as they all try to return home. If all the axes were one axe, Since 2014, there's also a book of the blog. The Mariana Trench is gone, and with it Guam and the Mariana Islands. Trench. Hurricanes are definitely worse than they used to be. But it would be the same problem with nukes. He liked these questions so much that he started up What If. How big of a lawn would you have to have so that when you finished mowing you'd need to start over because the grass has grown? Would I need to dive to actually experience a fatal amount of radiation? Dispatches from a horrifying alternate universe. What a great splish-splash that would be! The comet either burns up in the atmosphere or speeds up global warming. 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